New investor needing help/advice.. I got scammed :(

[Kwan Suh]

So I bought a 4plex in Michigan back in September and hired a handyman who only had positive reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.

He seemed pretty trustworthy at first and I hired him to get all 4 units rent ready where he quoted me $8000 to paint and cleanup all 4 units.. He requested I pay upfront and I was naïve (dumb) enough at the time to do this. He also asked I move in his girlfriend to one of the units where I found out she had numerous eviction histories later on (luckily I was able to collect rent up to this point).

So, after receiving my $8000, the handyman painted 2 of the units where I moved my inherited tenant to the newly painted unit for extra $50 more in rent ($800), and allowed his girlfriend to start her lease on the nicest unit that was just painted.

So this left him with 2 more units to paint & clean and have it ready for rent.

It is now December and when I visited the property from California 2 weeks ago, only 1 of 2 was partially painted.

Furthermore, back in October my property was inspected by the city and they wanted me to fix a list of violations. The handy man quoted me $5K where I paid it upfront being a dummy that I am L.

This violation list was also never even corrected, and now the handyman has ran away with my money at this point.

I’ve also found out through my inherited tenant as well as his girlfriend (when she got pissed at him for him cheating on her) that he was renting out one of the unit as a flop house for people to do drugs in all this time since September.  

But anyway, this is total of 8K + 5K I paid to this guy to make all units rent ready and resolve all city violations.

I was speaking to a lawyer in the area to sue him, and she mentioned that he is well known by the police and the prosecutors for having bunch of misdemeanors and other legal related issues. She mentioned I probably wont be able to collect anything from him and told me to move on with the loss. now I am just depressed that I am out of 13k by this SOB..

I want to see if I can get some advice here.. It really sucks that people like him can get away with taking advantage of new investors like me..